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You'd not be so opposed to the submission if you were a lot less cynical. I see this as a genuine warning to the community. Nothing more.

by reason 16y ago

raganwald 16y ago
I'm not cynical at all about HN in its context, namely as a site for sharing news about startups and hacking. It does a very good job of those things, and the mechanisms on place like moderating posts and karma all work towards that. With respect to people going off together and starting companies based on "meeting" each other on HN, I'm not cynical about that either, I just have no opinion of it one way or another. It's as if you told me that two people met at a bus stop, fell in love, got married, but one had an affair and now they are in a bitter custody dispute. I feel very sorry things didn't work out for them, but as far as the bus stop is concerned, my interest is in when the next bus arrives, and I think the interior of the shelter should be devoted to the schedule, not to their story. All I am saying is that there are established places for entrepreneurs to meet each other for the purpose of doing business, and such places have mechanisms for resolving and/or publicizing such disputes. p.s. That being said... Perhaps this is a one-time thing and will blow over. Unless the front page starts picking up a few stories like this a day, HN is not in any danger of losing its focus, so I don't have anything really to worry about. Carry on!
dschobel 16y ago
A warning to not send money to people you met on an open internet forum? Really? If someone can help lrm242 great, but I don't think anyone else has delusions that HN is anything but an open forum on the web and therefore entails the most basic precautions. There are thousands of other bad-actors waiting even if you manage to round up a posse to track this guy down. So lrm242 has my sympathies but this is definitely a personal problem because making any assumptions based on the fact that someone entered news.ycombinator.com into their address bar (which is the only barrier to membership) is frankly, stupid.
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You'd not be so opposed to the submission if you were a lot less cynical. I see this as a genuine warning to the community. Nothing more.

by reason 16y ago

You'd not be so opposed to the submission if you were a lot less cynical. I see this as a genuine warning to the community. Nothing more.

raganwald 16y ago

I'm not cynical at all about HN in its context, namely as a site for sharing news about startups and hacking. It does a very good job of those things, and the mechanisms on place like moderating posts and karma all work towards that. With respect to people going off together and starting companies based on "meeting" each other on HN, I'm not cynical about that either, I just have no opinion of it one way or another. It's as if you told me that two people met at a bus stop, fell in love, got married, but one had an affair and now they are in a bitter custody dispute. I feel very sorry things didn't work out for them, but as far as the bus stop is concerned, my interest is in when the next bus arrives, and I think the interior of the shelter should be devoted to the schedule, not to their story. All I am saying is that there are established places for entrepreneurs to meet each other for the purpose of doing business, and such places have mechanisms for resolving and/or publicizing such disputes. p.s. That being said... Perhaps this is a one-time thing and will blow over. Unless the front page starts picking up a few stories like this a day, HN is not in any danger of losing its focus, so I don't have anything really to worry about. Carry on!

dschobel 16y ago

A warning to not send money to people you met on an open internet forum? Really? If someone can help lrm242 great, but I don't think anyone else has delusions that HN is anything but an open forum on the web and therefore entails the most basic precautions. There are thousands of other bad-actors waiting even if you manage to round up a posse to track this guy down. So lrm242 has my sympathies but this is definitely a personal problem because making any assumptions based on the fact that someone entered news.ycombinator.com into their address bar (which is the only barrier to membership) is frankly, stupid.

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